Let’s start with the new Android releases first. Android 3.1 is available for the Xoom starting today, which brings a number of important features to the platform, such as an USB host API, input from mice, joysticks and gamepads, the Open Accessory API (more on this further down), and more. Android Icecream Sandwich will unify the phone and tablet versions of Android, and will therefore bring several Honeycomb features to smartphones. It’ll launch in the last quarter of 2011.

Google has also launched a music service, simply titled Music Beta by Google. With it, you can buy music from the Android market (or upload your own music from iTunes, Windows Media Player, or any other source) and stream it to any device – be it smartphone, tablet, or regular computer. Anything you add to your local music library will automatically be synced to Google’s servers, and become available on all devices – including playlists. Recently played music will be cached locally for offline access, and you can manually make songs available offline as well.

For now, Music Beta by Google is, well, in beta, and you’re going to need an invite. Sadly, it’s also limited to customers in the United States.

Google also launched a movie rental service. It sports the same restrictions as the recently launched YouTube rentals, so we’re looking at a 30-day window to watch your rented film, and once you started watching, you’ve got 24 hours to finish it. It’s all cross-device, of course.

The biggest news – for me, at least – and also by far the coolest stuff, is the Android Open Accessory Development Kit. This kit allows you to create all sorts of extravagant (and basic) accessories for Android, which are recognised by the operating system in a special accessory mode. While this in and of itself isn’t new – you can make accessories for iOS too – the really cool bit here is that there’s no certification process or other such nonsense, so aspiring basement hackers can get cracking right away.

All this is made possible by the hardware side of things, which is based on the well-known and loved Arduino open source electronics prototyping platform. You can buy an Arduino board for Android – if you don’t already own one – and then download the software side of the equation for free. You can basically use this combination to build whatever accessory you want.

Google too this a step further with Android@Home, which is basically Google’s vision of every device in your house being a potential Android accessory. For instance, they demoed how while playing a game, the mood lighting in your house can respond to the events in the game. However, the most impressive demonstration was that which combined Music Beta, near-field communication and Android@Home: CDs equipped with NFC chips, which you could then tap against a mini hifi set. This would immediately make the music on that CD available using Music Beta – on all your device. A second tap, and the music started playing.

Lastly, Google announced it is building an alliance of some sorts of device makers and carriers who will pledge to support each device with timely updates for at least 18 months. Details on this were still parse, though, as that’s about all we know – well, that, and a list of companies involved: HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Motorola, as well as the four major US carriers and Vodafone. Anybody is free to join this alliance.

All in all, that’s a lot of very cool stuff coming from Google. I’m particularly interested in what the massive body of clever developers and Arduino hackers can do with the Android Open Accessory Development Kit.

It’s really quite funny that supposedly educated and intelligent people can’t see where this is all heading. Sadly by time those people have that “uh-oh” moment, it will be far too late to do anything about it…

I’m curious, are you perhaps referring to the increasing trend of living our digital lives “in the cloud”? If so, I do share some of those concerns.

Specifically, I was awed and amazed at Amazon’s Cloud Drive/Player feature at first, as most of my digital music purchases come from them. It’s quite convenient to have the music I purchase automatically available on my Android phone, my laptop, my HTPC, etc. Then, because I purchased an MP3 album and turned on the Cloud Drive feature, I was awarded 20GB of additional storage.

My first instinct was to upload all of my online-purchased music from Amazon, iTunes and eMusic, as well as freebies downloaded from the (mostly indie) artists’ websites I visit. Then I got to thinking about it; I had blazed right through the service agreement without really reading it. I did some research and I found that Amazon not only reserves the right to peek at your files, they also give themselves permission to disclose the data to third parties.[1]

Now, all the music I intended to store on the service is legally purchased from the above sources, and I had no intention of uploading all of the files I have ripped from my CDs as the CDs themselves are my backup. But after reading that article and remembering that eMusic in particular does not use any metadata to show the files are legally obtained, I realized my only proof of purchase lay with the providers’ log files. Now, let’s say Amazon decides to forward a list of the music files in “my” storage area to the RIAA. What is to stop them from suing me for each and every file there that wasn’t purchased from Amazon itself? After all, the burden of proof is on me, not them, as the courts have so elegantly shown. eMusic might, might help me out — of the ones I listed, they are the only provider that maintains a list of your purchases so you can re-download at will — but what about the rest of them?

My point with all that is, what if Google’s music service is no different? Why should we trust them just because they say they won’t be evil? They’ve already failed that test several times in the past, especially regarding user privacy. I for one don’t trust them any more than I do Amazon.

That’s not to say I won’t give the service a test run, using some mp3s of my own work (I’m an amateur musician, though not a good one). Let the RIAA sue me for storing my own independent recordings; I’d love to see how that turns out!

Anyway, I do see the value in some of the other technology announced by Google; I’m particularly interested in the Arduino-based accessory stuff and I’d be willing to give that a run as well. For all my years of hardware tinkering I’ve never messed around with that family of microcontrollers. I think it would be fun.

Now, let’s say Amazon decides to forward a list of the music files in “my” storage area to the RIAA. What is to stop them from suing me for each and every file there that wasn’t purchased from Amazon itself? After all, the burden of proof is on me, not them, as the courts have so elegantly shown. eMusic might, might help me out — of the ones I listed, they are the only provider that maintains a list of your purchases so you can re-download at will — but what about the rest of them?

I really, really doubt the burden of proof is on you. I could just barely accept that that was true in the US, but in any of the more civilized countries the burden of proof would be on RIAA/similar entities.

Now, here comes the tricky part which I am 100% certain RIAA/similar entities will use to their advantage: if your files have lines like “Ripped and uploaded by X” in their metadata then it’s quite obvious it wasn’t obtained in an “authorized” way. And I can bet that most people don’t realize that most of such files do have exactly that kind of metadata tags in them. They’ll just upload those files without thinking more about it, then RIAA/et. al. will check the metadata provided by Google, and POOF: you’ve just provided them the evidence they need against you.

As far as I know the metadata tags that indicate the file was downloaded from torrent sites or similar is more than enough to sue over in the US, but.. how about the rest of the world? After all, the files you have in your “locker” are accessible only to you, you aren’t sharing them with anyone, so illegal distribution does not ever come in to play. And in many European countries you cannot be sued just for having such files in your possession, only for distribution of them. I predict that these RIAA and alike entities will try to sue and they will obviously try lobbying hard to get laws changed, but I’d say people are generally safe from them for now as long as they don’t distribute the files to anyone else.

[Disclaimer: I ain’t a lawyer so do not f*cking take anything I say as legal counseling or advice.]

You’re exactly right: The letter of the law is that the burden of proof is on the plaintiff here in the U.S., but the ugly reality is that they have the million-dollar lawyers on retainer and we the people have whatever we can or can’t afford. They have the resources to drag it out for years to make an example out of an individual, and the whole time the defendant is scrambling to prove that they are innocent. It’s utterly absurd.

As to the metadata, I’ve found more often than not that my files from eMusic say simply that they were encoded with LAME. Nothing there about where they came from, whether they are legit, etc. And let’s say someone out there bought some music from them, and then shared it (knowingly or unknowingly) on Kazaa or Limewire or another such network. I buy the same songs from eMusic, with the same digital signature, and now I have a file that is potentially flagged by the RIAA due to someone else’s infringing acts. Amazon grants the RIAA access to my files, and next thing I know I’m the one being sued.

That’s why I’m apprehensive about these new cloud-based services, and I will remain so unless they modify their privacy policy to protect their consumers from unjustified litigation.

As to the metadata, I’ve found more often than not that my files from eMusic say simply that they were encoded with LAME. Nothing there about where they came from, whether they are legit, etc.

As I said, the illegitimate uploads usually have such tags. Legitimate files usually do not have any such tags, atleast not the ones I have.

And let’s say someone out there bought some music from them, and then shared it (knowingly or unknowingly) on Kazaa or Limewire or another such network. I buy the same songs from eMusic, with the same digital signature, and now I have a file that is potentially flagged by the RIAA due to someone else’s infringing acts. Amazon grants the RIAA access to my files, and next thing I know I’m the one being sued.

Burden of proof in this case would be on RIAA. After all, the file is originally obtained legitimately and there is nothing to indicate otherwise (ie. no “Uploaded by/Ripped by” tags et. al.) then it doesn’t matter that the exact same file can also be found illegitimately. RIAA would have to prove that somehow the file you have is not from the legitimate source and that would be hard as there are absolutely no indications of such.

That’s why I’m apprehensive about these new cloud-based services, and I will remain so unless they modify their privacy policy to protect their consumers from unjustified litigation.

I am more concerned about metadata: especially younger people are bound to have some illegitimate copies of songs, whether they know that they are illegitimate or not, and if they then upload those songs to these services and Google scrounges their files for metadata they’ll be exposing themselves for legal action (in the US I might add, not likely in European countries as it’s still YOUR locker.)

Basically it means that people will have to check the filenames and metadata themselves, or Google will have to filter out metadata for it to be safe to use. And we all know Google won’t do the latter one.

Well… I must be one of these “supposedly educated and intelligent people“… All in all I find these announcements rather positive.

These services, once again, tend to increase usability and quality of Googles products. It seems that all is built to interact with existing systems (also those from competitors) and to avoid Lock-in.

Maybe you could come down to the level of stupid people like me and also explain a bit your statement or was it simply an anti-Google rant?

He won’t explain anything to you or to anyone. He is our local hit & run troll. Posts shit, people respond with reasonable counter points, he ignores them. Posts the same shit in other news (any news related to Apple or Google). He’s the worst type of Apple fanboy. See for example: http://www.osnews.com/thread?471309

It’s really quite funny that supposedly educated and intelligent people can’t see where this is all heading. Sadly by time those people have that “uh-oh” moment, it will be far too late to do anything about it…

Yeah, I know what you mean. This cloud thing scares me too. I hate the idea of relying on distant servers for accessing my music, my software, and in short my data. Of having a company own a large part of my life.

This is why I don’t use iTunes, and when asked about DAP/Phones/whatever purchases, always suggest to buy UMS devices allowing software and data sideloading and backup. Unlike you. Strange, eh ?

No, if you want to accuse Thom of having some double standards, let’s ask him why for some services being US-only is a fundamental defect which directly leads to failure in the long term, while for this Music Beta thing it’s just “sad”…

No, if you want to accuse Thom of having some double standards, let’s ask him why for some services being US-only is a fundamental defect which directly leads to failure in the long term, while for this Music Beta thing it’s just “sad”…

Yeah, I know what you mean. This cloud thing scares me too. I hate the idea of relying on distant servers for accessing my music, my software, and in short my data. Of having a company own a large part of my life.

I kinda feel the backlash against the cloud by some in the tech world is overstating things themselves. Should people put everything on someone elses servers and not store anything locally? Hell no, you should have local copies of everything. But as people start using more and more devices, storing a copy of everything on each machine just isn’t feasible. Naturally the solution is a good ol’ client/server system. Except people don’t want to administer their own severs, even among those who have the ability not everyone wants to do it themselves.

Is it any surprise then that people go to amazon, google or soon apple to do it for them. And no matter how many outages or misteps these services have people will keep coming back to them, because for most people it will still be better than doing it themselves.

Sure But what mrhasbeen was mentioning, I think, was an hypothetic future where google services would be like Steam and Apple’s App Store are now : a cloud-only world, where local copies are not feasible.

As an aside, I’m can also perfectly tolerate such solutions when it’s about things which don’t matter much to me. As an example, most of the single-player games I play are disposable pieces of fun which I’m done with in a week or so, so Steam is good enough for that, even though I strongly dislike their “no local copy” philosophy as a whole.

Sure But what mrhasbeen was mentioning, I think, was an hypothetic future where google services would be like Steam and Apple’s App Store are now : a cloud-only world, where local copies are not feasible.

What the hell are you talking about? Steam does have a local copy of all game data (installable in as many computers as you want) as well as allowing you to make local backups of your game data…so not cloud only.

I dont’t think so. If I remember correctly, many games (big titles in particular) use the login to a Steam account as their DRM method : since you can only be connected to Steam from one place at a time (if you exclude what can be done in offline mode, that is), you may only play the game on one computer at a time.

This would mean in turn that local copies of the installer (which I just learned about) are useless, because if Steam’s servers are down, you can’t play your game anyway.

[qIf I remember correctly, many games (big titles in particular) use the login to a Steam account as their DRM method : since you can only be connected to Steam from one place at a time (if you exclude what can be done in offline mode, that is), you may only play the game on one computer at a time. [/q]

Yes, you may only be logged in from one PC at a time which means you cannot make copies of your games and share them with your friends for them to play, too.

because if Steam’s servers are down, you can’t play your game anyway.

If Steam cannot get connection to Steam servers and you have been playing the game atleast once before it actually does allow you to still play it.

Before he said any of that, he said you have to understand the nature of git: When they release Ice Cream Sandwich, the Honeycomb source will be in the patch history. What they may not bother to do is to tag the specific commit of Honeycomb.

But once Ice Cream Sandwich is released, I have no idea who the fuck would care about Honeycomb; the only reason would be for a device that had proprietary drivers that never updates to Ice Cream Sandwich, but that could be solved pretty easily by just pinning the kernel release to Honeycomb and taking the rest of ice cream.

All this hand-wringing over Honeycomb is fucking annoying at this point. Get over it.

There is a gem in that news item that seems to have been overlooked in previous comments:

…and carriers to bring timely Android updates to devices for a minimum of 18 months.

I have an HTC Desire bought with Android 2.1 around mi-september. Some time later, it was upgraded OTA with 2.2; that was last year. Since then, I’ve been waiting for 2.3 which was released… last year, five months ago.

There is a gem in that news item that seems to have been overlooked in previous comments:

…and carriers to bring timely Android updates to devices for a minimum of 18 months.

I have an HTC Desire bought with Android 2.1 around mi-september. Some time later, it was upgraded OTA with 2.2; that was last year. Since then, I’ve been waiting for 2.3 which was released… last year, five months ago.

Doubtful this will ever happen or make any impact on consumers, btw. Microsoft made the same “announcement” regarding WP7 and how Microsoft would retain control over the update/upgrade channel and release in timely fashion.

Then they find out the carriers (at least here in the US) have little or no interest in giving any control to anyone (especially that might disrupt the absurd and lucrative upgrade your phone every 8 month cycle mentality they have fostered among consumers), and there is little anyone is going to do about it.